UK-based bulk storage company Oikos has completed ‘significant’ infrastructure works at its 70 acre (28 ha) bulk liquid storage facility on Canvey Island in Essex, UK.
Oikos, which is owned by Aberdeen Standard Investments as part of its energy portfolio, has recommissioned the Oikos feeder line that connects the terminal to the Compania Logistica de Hidrocarburos (CLH) Thames B pump station and the national CLH pipeline network.
The company will also shortly complete Project Premo, a new third loading bay for diesel. The new, state-of-the-art bay will include additive injection to allow a range of diesel grades to be supplied according to customer demand, with two new additive tanks, a best-in-class additivation rack system and new large and small-bore pipework. Tony Woodward, Oikos General Manager, describes the system as ‘game-changing’.
Customers previously reliant on pipelines will now be able to load trucks at a rate of 2,250 L/min, using new road loading arms, Accuload equipment to measure volumes and Fuel-Facs software and distributive control systems to manage loading. The new systems will also produce HMRC-complaint paperwork. Oikos says that the gate-to-gate turnaround time should be around 20 minutes.
Oikos has also recently upgraded existing storage facilities, improved interconnectivity between different parts of the site and completed a deep-water jetty extension to cater for LR2 vessels up to 120,000 tonnes deadweight. The investments have also included new lighting, security and safety features.
Oikos says that the investment at the site on the River Thames will help to future-proof customer fuel supply and build resilience. The Canvey Island facility supplies road and aviation fuels across southeast England, including to Heathrow, Gatwick, Stansted and Luton airports.
Oikos is now developing plans for an additional 300,000 m3 of storage as part of the Southside Development, which it says will create ‘an integrated fuels terminal and distribution hub on a nationally significant scale.’
‘Resilience for us is about creating options and spreading risk as we are a 24/7, 365 days a year operation. Customer demand is rapidly changing and the storage sector, as a piece of critical national infrastructure, has to be at the vanguard of those reforms. We are seeing a new focus on a wider range of diesel grades with customers rightly wanting them delivered in a faster, more flexible and agile way. To have been able as a business to deliver this on time and on budget, and to the highest, independently attested safety and security standards, has been very satisfying,’ says Woodward.
The company says that it needs the UK government to recognise the fuel storage sector as critical national infrastructure and provide policy and investment certainty. It adds that it is looking forward to seeing the government’s forthcoming National Infrastructure Plan which will lay out recovery and restart proposals following COVID-19.
